The present invention is related to a magnetic resonance imaging apparatus and magnetic resonance imaging method.
A magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) apparatus is known which uses the nuclear magnetic resonance phenomenon (NMR) to take tomographic images of a subject. The MRI apparatus is widely used in such fields as medical and industrial.
When taking a tomographic image of a subject by using an MRI apparatus, the subject is placed in the imaging field where a static magnetic field is formed, to align the spin direction of protons within the subject in the direction of magnetostatic field to obtain magnetic vector. Then, electromagnetic waves at a resonance frequency are emitted from an RF coil to generate the NMR phenomenon to modify the magnetic vector of the protons. The MRI apparatus then receives the magnetic resonance signals from the protons which fall back to the original magnetic vector by using the RF coil, to generate the tomographic image of the subject based on thus received magnetic resonance signals (as is disclosed in the following patent document 1).
[Patent Document 1] JP-A-2002-165775
When a MRI apparatus is used to perform an actual imaging scan of a subject, the registration scan is needed to be performed in advance to generate and display the registration scan image in order to determine the slice position to perform the imaging scan. For instance, a registration scan image for each of the axial, sagittal, coronal planes of the subject is generated and displayed. Then the operator observes the position registration images to set the slice position to be performed in the actual imaging scan. Then the actual imaging scan at the slice position set on the subject is performed and the actual scanning image is generated based on the MRI signals obtained from the subject during the actual imaging scan.
However, in the actual scanning image thus generated as have been described above there may be cases in which some artifacts happen due to the crosstalk or phase folding, or in which desired section is not captured. There may be cases in which, because of such reasons, the actual imaging scan must be retried to obtain a desirable actual scanning image. In particular such inconvenience becomes evident when the scanning is performed in a multi-slice or multi-angle scheme. This could lead to difficulties of efficiently performing the imaging of a subject.